I once heard a pastor say that Christians have the one thing that everyone in the world is longing for. Time. We have the gift of eternal life. I had never thought of it in these terms. In other words, our time will never run out. It seems too good to be true, but then I look at Jesus. Jesus doesn’t appear to multitask. He does one thing at a time, and He does it right. Somehow He’s able to give me His undivided attention all the time. It’s completely divine.
I can’t tell you the last time I gave anyone my undivided attention.
Eternity will be different. I can sit and talk with Big-Hearted Betty for hours. Anna and I can have a tea party for a hundred years, and I’ll never tell Nick to hurry up and finish putting his shoes on so we can get to school on time, because we’ll never be late. There won’t be any billable hours in heaven. Doug and I can finally celebrate his fortieth birthday without the flat-screen TV, and I’ll get a pedicure every weekend. I won’t get any more speeding tickets, because I’ll never be in a hurry. And my eyebrows will never grow together, unless of course it’s high fashion. Just thinking about eternity helps me slow down.
FOURTEEN
Devoted Mommy
Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”
Proverbs 31:28–29
What does it mean to be Devoted Mommy? I use this term loosely, but deep down it’s really what I want to be known for most.
When I think about the high calling of raising children I get completely overwhelmed. One thing’s for sure, I need lots of help—which is why I constantly read books on parenting. I’m not sure I’ve learned anything, other than no one has really figured it out. Typically, I buy a new book and read the first few chapters with zeal. Then a range of doubts and discouragement overcome me. I’ve tried this before and it doesn’t work. Or worse, Maybe this would have worked at the time, but I’ve already blown it.
Then the guilt starts in. As my kids get older, I’m losing more and more control. According to the experts, the kids watch too much TV, eat too much junk, and make too many choices. Anna shouldn’t be allowed to wear Hannah Montana T-shirts; Nick should be limited to twenty minutes a day of video games; and the entire household should not revolve around Abby’s latest tantrum. Maybe I should have had them all on that rigid feeding schedule at birth after all.
Lessons from My Mother
I don’t think my mother put me on a rigid feeding schedule, so maybe there’s still hope. She read Bible stories to me every night and taught me to read from the King James Version. My second grade teacher wondered why I was always using words like thou and thee and quoting from the Twenty-third Psalm. We were in church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening, and I wasn’t allowed to miss Sunday school unless I was deathly ill. But she never tried to control my interests or my friends, and she never got rigid about theology. Instead, she modeled an authentic faith and would get tears in her eyes every time she talked about how much she loved Jesus. Bedtime prayers could last up to twenty minutes. In addition to praying for family and friends, she always prayed for people she didn’t even know, souls yet to be saved, and last but not least, the peace of Jerusalem. I remember thinking to myself some evenings, Where does she come up with all this stuff? Doesn’t she just want to go to sleep? One time I even asked her, “Mom, why do you always pray for the peace of Jerusalem?” After all, hasn’t there always been fighting in the Mideast? Doe she really think her prayers are going to change thousands of years of turmoil?
Her answer? Psalm 122:6: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” She’s more concerned about doing the right thing and leaves the outcome to God.
Unlike my mother, I don’t have my kids in church three times a week. We’re lucky to make it to Sunday school on time, and we can just forget about perfect attendance. But I still try to keep a ritual of bedtime stories and prayers. Unfortunately my prayers often last about twenty seconds, and lots of times we don’t get beyond our own family, let alone people we don’t know or distant lands. I usually forget to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Now that I have children of my own, you’d think my mother would give me a bunch of unsolicited advice. But she doesn’t. That’s what older sisters are for. So I watch her, very closely, and Devoted Mommy tries to model her the best I can.
Sometimes I ask her, “How did you do it, Mom?”
She gives me the same answer every time, in the King James Version, of course: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”1
I listen for a couple of reasons. First, she’s my mother. Second, her advice is so much simpler than all those parenting books. Simple is good right now.
I’ve watched her for years. Rising early in the morning to have time alone with God. Raising five daughters. Managing a household. Being patient with my father on his own faith journey. Battling illness and depression. Overcoming cancer. Running circles around her grandchildren. I wish she had a formula I could package, and I always tell her, “Mom, if I can be half the mother you’ve been, I’ll be satisfied.”
She also taught me that the most powerful tool of a parent is unconditional love. When I was fourteen, I got busted skinny-dipping at church camp in the middle of the night under questionable circumstances. Unfortunately, my youth pastor called my mother the next morning to give a full report of my indiscretions. I apologized through my tears and begged her not to tell my father. She never breathed a word. No questions. Just complete and total forgiveness. I’m sure she got on her knees and even shed a few tears in the process, but she never let me see her flinch.
Lessons from Trusting Tracy
Some women are born to be mothers. Other women, like me, didn’t have any maternal instincts until after we had children. Jock Jill used to say that she had the maternal instincts of a rattlesnake, but nature quickly took over after she had her daughter and now she wonders what life was like before she was a mother. Sassy Shelly wasn’t even planning to have Sam, but he changed her life forever. Soon after his birth she was determined to beat her biological clock and quickly birthed three more children.
Some women want to be mothers more than anything in the world, including some of my friends who don’t have children of their own. Trusting Tracy is one of those women. Not only does she want to be a mother, she was made to be a mother. She’s had a successful career and at one point she even had a family of her own. A family that was taken away after a difficult divorce and a stepdaughter who will no longer call her mama. My heart breaks sometimes when I watch her with my own children. She is patient, loving, creative, and even crafty. She turns old newspapers into art projects and even showed Anna how to make a homemade dictionary with letters and pictures. She’s so much more natural at motherhood than just about anyone I know. Which is why I really can’t understand why God hasn’t given her the one thing in life she really wants.
We all know someone who wants children so badly that it hurts so much to even imagine what she must be thinking and feeling. Some of our sisters and friends are going through tedious and expensive fertility treatments, and others are waiting for years and saving money for adoptions. Before I was a mother, I used to think women obsessed with procreating just needed to move on. Now I understand why they don’t give up. And I know from talking to these friends that the last thing they want is for people like me to feel sorry for them. The wait is bad enough. The last thing you need is some fertile woman like me patronizing you or telling you she knows how bad you really have it. No, I really don’t understand and I probably never will. So instead we listen and support our friends and pray that we will all become stronger women together.
So we pray for Trusting Tracy as we anxiously await the adoption of her daughter, Jaina. We don’t know who Jaina is yet, and we may not meet her for a few years. But we know that she and Anna an
d Abby will be great friends. Tracy will take them to the park together while I am stuck on conference calls, and they will make lots of doll clothes together and dress up like princesses and make homemade dictionaries.
I recently asked Tracy how she waits patiently for Jaina. How do you keep your sanity when you know your daughter is out there, also waiting for you, but you can’t yet go to her? This leads to a long, philosophical discussion of what it means to trust God, and Trusting Tracy explains that she finally let go when she realized the Christian life is most like a river. Instead of trying to swim upstream, you go with the current and let go. Trusting Tracy is going to make a great mommy, and I’m thankful that I get to stand by her as she waits for her daughter.
Bedtime Stories
Given that I’m gone most days, Devoted Mommy reserves nighttime for prayers and Bible stories with the kids. Bedtime is sacred and some days our only time alone. The only other place we’re alone on a regular basis is the car, one of the only other spots I have a captive audience. So we talk about what we’re learning in Sunday school, sing spiritual songs, and we pray when the traffic gets too heavy or the other cars honk at us. At least at bedtime it’s relatively quiet, and there are no honking cars.
One night at the beginning of first grade, Nick and I were in his room getting ready to say prayers. He told me he didn’t want to pray. When I asked him why, he said he was afraid his friends would hear him. I smiled gently, kissed him on the forehead, and explained to him that he doesn’t have to be ashamed when he prays, but it’s okay if he doesn’t want to pray out loud. God can even hear our thoughts.
Nick has lots of good questions and has decided that he wants to be a scientist. In the back of my mind, I worry about how he will grapple with science and faith, but I encourage him to pursue science and even signed him up for “Mad Science” classes after school.
Nick asks me questions like, How do we get to heaven? I give him a long explanation by explaining Christ’s death on the cross, the propitiation of sin, and the acceptance of forgiveness. He listens intently but then asks again. He is literally asking a different question: How do we get to heaven—by bus, by plane, by magic carpet, by time travel, or by space shuttle? I don’t have these answers. I simply tell him that God takes us, but I can tell that my answers don’t always satisfy him.
Another favorite question of Nick’s is, How old is Jesus? My response is that He’s always been with God the Father. Nick replies, “How did He become a baby?” This conversation goes on for some time, and I try to explain to Nick that even though Jesus was born in Bethlehem, He existed prior to being born in human form. These are complicated concepts that even I don’t understand. For this reason, I always put Nick to bed last. That gives us plenty of time to sort through these issues without interruption from his younger sisters.
Anna doesn’t ask as many questions. She’s much more practical about her faith and is more interested in the here and now. She asks things like, Why did God make mosquitoes? I want to explain to her that the world is not the way God originally intended and that things will be perfect in heaven. But I never seem to have the right words, she gets more confused, and we decide we’ll just ask God when we get to heaven. She likes that answer better.
Abby insists on praying out loud rather dramatically. She seems to pray more than anyone else in the family, but I fear that it’s because she simply likes to hear herself talk. She prays for everyone in our extended family by name, thanks God for the sun, moon, and stars, and then tells Him about her day and her view of the world, and then she proceeds to thank Him again for the same things, in case He didn’t hear her the first time. Usually one of us has to cut her off at the dinner table before our food gets cold.
Nick is always worried about his younger sisters’ moral and spiritual development. I constantly have to remind him that God put his parents in charge of his sisters, not him, but he still tries to tell me how to discipline Anna or when to put Abby in time-out. When Nick was four, he came to me and told me that Anna had a lot of sin in her heart. I tried not to laugh, and I explained to him that Anna is younger than he, and God is patient with all of us despite our mistakes.
Sometimes, God speaks to my children in the most unexpected places. Like Target. Nick and Anna were bickering while I was shopping—nothing more than the usual sibling rivalry, but this time Nick gave me a look of terror. Something was really bothering him. “What is it, Nick?” I asked him.
“I can’t tell you here, not in front of Anna,” he replied. I immediately assumed the worst. Anna had done something terribly wrong, right under my nose, and I had missed it. She’s always pushing Nick’s buttons, and this time she must have pushed him over the edge. I asked him a second time what had happened, but he still wanted to wait until we got home.
I could only imagine the level of moral turpitude, but was at least glad he didn’t want to embarrass Anna, nor cause more drama in the middle of Target. On the way home, he couldn’t hold it in any longer. He starting crying and spilled his guts in the car. “Sometimes the Devil tries to make me punch Anna.” Then he looked at me and said, “Are you going to kick me out of the house?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What kind of mother did he think I was anyway? So I explained to him that he wouldn’t get kicked out of the house and that even Jesus was tempted. The important thing is not giving in. And even when we screw up, God still forgives us.
Cool Mom Is a Hot Mom
Even though I want to teach my kids about God and have lots of spiritual conversations, I really want them to think I’m cool. In fact, if they don’t think I’m cool, they’re going to tune me out completely by the fifth grade, or even sooner. So while bedtime is reserved for prayers and stories, I try to squeeze in fun whenever we can. Anna and I love to go in her room, shut the door, and blast Hannah Montana as loud as we can while Anna and Abby put on a show. We put on blonde wigs, wear heavy makeup, and use a karaoke player with microphones. Abby knows all the words to “Best of Both Worlds” and I know I shouldn’t let her jump on the bed, but I’m laughing so hard and we’re all dancing, and I don’t think anyone is going to lose an eye. So she keeps jumping.
Nick doesn’t like to join in the shows anymore since he announced he hates “girl songs,” so we have to get more creative to spend quality time together. We love to curl up with a good book, usually about whales, sharks, or some endangered species. But sometimes he really wants me to act silly or join him in some crazy boyish stunt, just so I can be part of his world. Last year on spring break, Nick kept begging me to boogie board in the ocean with him. I really hate all the seaweed and shells between my toes, and the thought of getting stung by a jellyfish terrifies me, but there are times when Devoted Mommy just can’t say no to him. So I jumped in.
Boogie boarding is quite exhilarating when you get the hang of it. Never mind the sand in my hair, saltwater stuck in my throat, or the fact that I twisted and bruised my shoulder when a giant wave knocked me over and pulled me to the ocean floor. I felt like a teenager again, and I even had an audience. Maybe I could be Superwoman after all. I looked up and a group of people were standing on the shore cheering. Could they be cheering for me? They probably think I’m one of the cool college girls here for spring break, I thought to myself. Then I heard a man start chanting, “Go, Mom. Go, Mom.” The rest of the crowd started to join in with Nick, who was now yelling at the top of his lungs. Okay, I guess they knew I wasn’t a spring breaker after all, but at least I was out there living life large and letting go. When I got to the shore, a guy with a T-shirt that said “I Love Hot Moms” stopped me and said, “Lady, I’ve got to give it to you. Most moms won’t even get up off their beach towels, but not you.”
I felt a little embarrassed as I later pulled the sand out of my bathing suit in handfuls. There’s a certain age where a woman really shouldn’t show that much skin. Aren’t mommy capes supposed to be long and modest
? I probably looked a little silly out there, but Nick was beaming. It was all for him.
Unconditional Love
As much as I want my kids to think I’m cool, more than anything I want them to know how much I love them. I mean really love them, no matter what. I pray my kids won’t get in trouble for skinny-dipping at church camp, but even if they do I’ll still love and accept them.
I’ve never been the best at discipline, and I have lots to learn about tough love. But I also know that each of my children is different, and the only thing they all consistently respond to is unconditional love.
In many ways, Anna is like me—she’s motivated by grace. Doug figured this out long before I did, and he always reminds me that if you’re overly critical or try to back her into a corner or take away privileges, it completely crushes her spirit and she shuts down, but if you open your arms to praise her good behavior or put a carrot in front of her, she’s usually obedient and eager to please. So when Anna won’t listen and gets more hysterical than usual, I sit her down, look at her in the eye, and say to her, “Even when you don’t listen to Mom, I still love you.” It doesn’t work every time, but sometimes she gets quiet, she smiles, and then she calms down enough to make a “good choice.” There are still consequences to her actions. But she knows I’m going to love and accept her, regardless.
Anna has adopted this approach with the rest of the family. She frequently tells me, “I still love you, Mom, when you yell at me.” And she’s always telling Abby that we love her, even when she’s “bad.”
Abby enjoys life to the fullest and pulls more deviant stunts than the other two put together. But the one thing I’m encouraged by is her repentant spirit. Abby is by far the best at saying sorry. Getting Nick and Anna to say sorry is like pulling teeth; not so with Abby. She’ll accept full responsibility, even when it’s not her fault. I can’t quite figure it out, except that she always wants to restore the relationship. She’s genuinely sad when someone else is offended. So even though she’s the wildest two-year-old I’ve ever met, the rest of us have a lot to learn from her.
Chasing Superwoman Page 15
